So you have decided to join a network marketing company with goal of building a successful home business! How do you know if you have what it takes to succeed? Do you even know what it takes to succeed?

As a long-term owner of a store-front business, and as an experienced network marketer, I would like to make some comparisons of a conventional store-front type of business, to a home-based network marketing business.

If you were planning to purchase a conventional business of some kind, perhaps, an appliance business or a shoe store, you would be asking some specific questions before investing your hard-earned money. You would want to consider following: vDoes it have stability, or is it a risky new start-up venture? vHow hard will it be to acquire customers for my product or service? vHow long will it take to break even and then make a profit? vHow much time do I have to devote to this business? vIs there a mentor nearby who will teach me business? vAm I willing to stick with this even though there may be a number of obstacles to overcome & not everything goes right all time?

Your list of questions could go on and on.

Now let’s turn to another scenario. Instead of purchasing a conventional business, you find many “opportunities” on internet. Network marketing, of course, has great benefit of enabling you to build a residual income from comfort of your own home at a much lower start-up cost. However, there is much “hype” on internet, countless websites really look great, and they make success sound so easy, that it can be deceiving to average person..

So when person joins a good company and doesn’t make big bucks in a few weeks, it is easy for him to think that fault is with company. Meanwhile, he’s received 14 other great offers that make it sound easier than what he just joined. He quits before even getting started and joins another company. Usually second opportunity doesn’t work either, and he goes to number three, number four, etc. Generally new start-up opportunities will not last long, will fail, and may even just disappear. Unfortunately, at this point a person may have spent a lot of time and money just chasing rabbits.

Do you own an online business? A web site? Are you promoting affiliate programs? Then you should be writing articles.

Why? Let me ask you, what is main purpose of your web site?

Of course it’s this: to make sales. And to make sales you first need traffic. You somehow need to get visitors to your web site if you want to be successful.

And here’s thing...writing articles and publishing them on Internet is a very effective way of achieving just that!

Instead of spending your time and money on ineffective means of advertising, write a short article every now and then.

Write about recent developments and trends in your niche or area of expertise, about product or service you’re selling. Teach people how to do something, or give them practical tips. Predictions work well, too. The list of possibilities is almost endless.

There are numerous article directories out there, and they will be happy to add your article to their online directories.

Where people like yourself look for good content to reprint on their web sites or in their newsletters. So your article gets read and readers learn about you, your business, your web site, your product.

But that's not all.

It gets distributed and reprinted over and over again, constantly reaching new readers! Without any effort from your part, besides submitting your article to a few directories!

The positive effects could last for literally years.